A book seeking to trace the history of women's movement in India was launched here today, with the authors portraying the role of leaders like Aruna Asaf Ali in raising crucial problems faced by women in the social, economic and political spheres.
Jointly authored by noted women's rights activists Gargi Chakravartty and Supriya Chotani, the book 'Charting a New Path: Early Years of the NFIW' documents the significant aspects of what is known as the "silent period" in the Indian women's movement.
The NFIW (National Federation of Indian Women) was established in 1954 as a mass organisation by several leaders of the former Mahila Atma Raksha Samiti including Ali.
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Addressing the gathering, Aparna Basu, former President, All India Women's Conference(AIWC) said the 1960s and '70s was "not that silent a period that it is often thought to be" as several movements were launched highlighting the problems of women.
The major issues highlighted by the women's movements back then included equal pay for equal work, right to land to peasant women, against dowry and "particularly the fight against patriarchy," she said.
"It is true that once the Report on Equality came out in 1974, it really brought out that in 25 years of independence women had not made the sort of progress that we thought we had made," Basu said.
"The 70s and 80s saw proliferation of women's movements. There were women groups of three to four major types like those which were women's wings of political parties, the second type which were focused on single issues like rape and dowry often calling themselves non-aligned NGOs and then there were academic institutions and research centres that took up the issue of women studies," she said.
The book highlighted how these lesser known women's struggles formed the foundations of the feminist phase that followed in the 1970s and 1980s.
"Partriarchy may not have been spelt down the way it has been 1975 onwards," Chakravartty said as she asked, "wasn't Urmila Devi's reference to a woman as a 'glorified maid servant' in the first Congress an attack on patriarchy?"
Another important aspect taken up in the book is the dispelling of the "myth" that NFIW is the women's wing of Communist Party of India (CPI).
"NFIW was not the women wing of CPI. I got this information not from any document but from Calcutta police records, which included intercepted letters," she said.
